Polling

Steve Pearce’s campaign released an internal poll showing he trails Michelle Lujan Grisham by two percentage points. The campaign touted the results, saying they show the race is within the margin of error and so essentially tied. The poll, conducted by The Tarrance Group, showed Lujan Grisham with the support of 47 percent of registered voters and Pearce with the support of 45 percent. Related post: Is the governor’s race tied? Pearce does not have a primary opponent, while Lujan Grisham is facing two Democrats in June’s primary.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains underwater in New Mexico and many other states, according to the latest Morning Consult poll. The poll showed Trump’s national approval rating plummeted to a new low for the pollster, at 41 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval. The numbers are nearly the same in New Mexico, where 42 percent of voters approve of the president and 54 percent disapprove. That’s a net approval of -12 percent percentage points. The poll was conducted from March 1 to March 31.

ByRachel Bluth, Kaiser Health News | March 23, 2018

The recent school shootings in Florida and Maryland have focused attention on the National Rifle Association’s clout in state and federal lobbying activities. Yet more than the NRA or even Wall Street, it’s the pharmaceutical industry that Americans think has the most muscle when it comes to policymaking. A poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 72 percent of people think the drug industry has too much influence in Washington —outweighing the 69 percent who feel that way about Wall Street or the 52 percent who think the NRA has too much power. Only the large-business community outranked drugmakers. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

Drug prices are among the few areas of health policy where Americans seem to find consensus.

In the past few weeks, I noticed something from Steve Pearce’s campaign. Twice, staffers posted on social media that in the governor’s race, he is “tied” in the gubernatorial race against Michelle Lujan Grisham. And this week, when replying to the story about his controversial comments on same-sex marriage from 2008, his campaign manager asserted the video came out because national Democrats “are panicking because this race is tied.”

Democrats still have a contested primary, while Pearce has no opponent in June. I asked Pearce’s campaign manager why he said that, and he pointed to Google Ads by Lujan Grisham’s campaign asserting that the race is tied. “I’d assume it’s one of their internal polls but that’s a guess,” Paul Smith wrote in an email.

Donald Trump’s approval rating among New Mexico voters is still underwater, but rose slightly from the lows of January. According to the latest numbers from Morning Consult, in February, 42 percent of New Mexico voters approve of Trump’s job performance while 55 percent disapprove. While this is a slight improvement over the January numbers, which showed a 39 percent approval rating and 58 percent disapproval rating, it still is far below Trump’s initial numbers among New Mexico voters from when he was inaugurated in January of 2017. And a Morning Consult poll pitting Trump against a generic Democrat shows 44 percent of voters nationwide say they would vote for the Democrat, while just 36 percent say they would vote for Trump. Trump recently named Brad Parscale as his 2020 campaign manager.

New Mexico voters have soured on President Donald Trump, bringing his already-low statewide approval rating down below 40 percent in January. That’s according to numbers from pollster Morning Consult.

Pollsters found that in January 2017, when he was inaugurated, 52 percent of New Mexico voters approved of Trump’s job performance. But just one year into his four-year term, that number plummeted to 39 percent. His disapproval rating in the state also increased, from 35 percent in 2017 to 58 percent in 2018. Nationwide, however, his approval rating rose.

Gov. Susana Martinez’s approval rating remained among the worst in the nation at the end of 2017, according to a recent poll. The poll finds that 57 percent of New Mexico voters disapprove of her job performance, compared to just 33 percent who approve. That disapproval number is the fifth-worst in the nation and two of the governors below her have since left office. Her approval rating, meanwhile, is seventh-worst among all governors polled. Her job approval ratings in the last three months of 2017 also showed a drop from the previous ratings, released in October of last year.

Almost half of New Mexicans approve of the way their U.S. Senators are doing their jobs, while less than a third disapprove. That’s according to the latest Morning Consult approval ratings. The poll conducted in late 2017 found that 49 percent of New Mexico registered voters approve of Tom Udall’s job performance, while 29 percent disapproved and 2 percent had no opinion. Martin Heinrich’s approval rating sat at 46 percent, while 29 percent disapproved and 24 percent had no opinion. The numbers do not always add up to 100 percent because of rounding.

Gov. Susana Martinez’s approval ratings have continued to drop and she is now among the least-popular governors in the nation. Those numbers come from a Morning Consult poll of registered voters that showed the approval ratings of New Mexico’s two U.S. Senators dropping as well, though not as much as Martinez’s. The poll found 37 percent of voters approved of Martinez’s job performance compared to 52 percent who disapproved. Ten percent of voters had no opinion (numbers in poll results sometimes do not add up to 100 percent because of rounding). The 37 percent approval rating represented the seventh-lowest among all governors.

A new poll shows Michelle Lujan Grisham has a strong lead in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. The poll by The Majority Institute (TMI) found that 75 percent of likely Democratic primary voters support Lujan Grisham, lapping the field. Ten percent support Jeff Apodaca, three percent Joe Cervantes and two percent Peter DeBenedittis. According to the poll ten percent of likely Democratic primary voters are undecided. Rick Palacio, a managing partner with TMI, said the poll was not paid or conducted for by any candidate or committee “but was part of a larger research project.”

“We regularly conduct research on a variety of topics nationally and in various states throughout the country,” Palacio said in an email to NM Political Report.

OPINION & ANALYSIS

There was a time when wading waist-deep into the Rio Grande in the heat of the summer’s blistering solar rays was as common as finding a wild willow tree growing by the river. But as we observe this becoming a distant memory, a new reality is emerging. A farmer friend, on his way to the […]

The New Mexico Department of Health is placing political ideology above public health by refusing to recognize the reality that cannabis offers a viable alternative to opioids (“DOH: Reports on cannabis for opioid abuse are ‘poor in quality,’ May 20). This ‘Flat Earth’ position ignores a myriad of data generated from other states, as well […]

From the porch near the house, I see Papa in the distance, shovel on his shoulder, his outline as familiar as his presence. Egrets graze along the water that moves in and across the field, alfalfa plants brightening the morning with a welcoming green. The swallows — las golondrinas — fly down and across the water, grasping […]

New Mexico has a jobs problem. We have high crime. We’re ranked 49th in the country for child well-being, showing how much our kids suffer. Our home was just ranked the second most stressed state in the nation. These are tough issues, but there are solutions. Giving every kid the support and education they need […]

Our children need nature. To grow up healthy, kids need a clean, beautiful, and accessible outdoors where they can play and discover the amazing world around them. Spending time with family while connecting with nature brings tremendous health and educational benefits to children. Fortunately, New Mexico has numerous spectacular and historically and socially significant outdoor […]

Despite the rains that doused parts of New Mexico on Monday, the state officially entered into drought conditions on the Rio Grande when water levels in two key reservoirs dipped below a critical legal threshold.